108 
terranean habit of the grubs protect them in great measure against two 
of the three principal classes of natural enemies of insect larvae ; namely, 
birds and insect parasites. They are more liable to fungus parasitism, 
it is true, but many kinds of much less abundant insects suffer far more 
heavily therefrom, and authentic reports of the notable destruction of 
our American white grubs by fungus parasites are rare. The beetles are 
especially protected by their large size and heavy armor, by their noc- 
turnal habit and their skill in hiding themselves by day, by the enor- 
mous numbers im which they appear, and by the relatively short term 
of their adult life. Cold and heat, drouth and wet weather have little 
noticeable effect upon these insects in any stage, and even starvation 
does not kill the grubs, for in the absence of other food they can live 
for months on earth alone. 
Great as the number doubtless is of individuals of the several spe- 
cies which fall victims during the year to various enemies and other 
hostile agencies, the evidence now before us does not warrant us in 
placing any considerable reliance on these natural checks to the multi- 
plication of the white grubs, but we are rather led to conclude that 
American agriculture must look to its own resources for a remedy. If, 
however, we take into account the fact that our common white grubs 
are native insects, most of them lving originally in the prairie sod, 
which formed a denser, more uniform, and more continuous covering 
to the surface of the country than the crops now raised by the farmer, 
and further recall the fact that under these primitive conditions these 
insects rarely produced any conspicuous effect upon our native vegeta- 
tion, we may infer with some confidence that they are not likely to in- 
crease indefinitely and inordinately, but that the natural checks which 
held them primitively within a certain well-defined limit will reassert 
themselves under the not very different conditions of a developed agri- 
culture. Such data as we have concerning the enemies of these insects, 
animal and vegetable, are presented here more as an indication of the in- 
completeness of our knowledge, than because of their present practical 
value. 
Birds=—White grubs and June beetles are eaten to some extent by 
a considerable variety of birds, doubtless by many more than my cullings 
of the scanty literature of this subject have brought to lght. 
In my own studies*, I have found June beetles eaten by the robin, 
eatbird, brown thrush, wood thrush, hermit thrush, bluebird, and 
meadow lark; Mr. E. V. Wilcoxt has found both June beetles and-white 
erubs in the stomachs of robinst; and Glover long ago recorded the oc- 
currence of June beetles in the stomach of a woodpecker (Rep. U. S. 
Comm. Agr. 1865, p. 38). Dr. A. K. Fisher§ reports the occurrence of 
these beetles in the food of the red-tailed hawk, the red-shouldered hawk, 
the broad-winged hawk, the sparrow hawk, the screech owl, and the 
ereat horned owl: and white grubs in that of the red-shouldered hawk, 
the sparrow hawk, and the barred owl. Dr. C. V Riley’s assistants** 
recognized fragments of the beetles in the stomachs of six English 
* Bull. Tl. ‘State. Lab. Nat. Hlist., Vol, I, No.3, pp. 98, 94-101) 0b) 2095 S207 
Trans. Ill. Hort. Soc. 1880, p. 236. 
+ Bull. Ohio Agr. Exper. Station, No. 43 (1892), p. 127. 
~ See also Lintner’s 9th Rep. St. Ent. N. Y. (1893), p. 356. 
§ Bull. 8, Div. Economic Ornith. and Mammalogy, U. S. Dept. Agr. 
** Bull. 1, Div. Economic Ornith. and Mammalogy, U. S. Dept. Agr., p. 111. . 
